That's the origin and prescriptivist point of view. Shall we change all modern usages based on their etymologies or just this one? I have never met a non-pedant, non-geek use the term as an unambiguous plural or use the term "datum".

Note that in most cases, using the term as a plural and using it as uncountable are not distinguishable: "The data" is 100% ambiguous this way.

In geek/pedantic circles this is used more than "virii" but is more commonly accepted by people onto whom it is pushed.

Yet still the vast majority of people use it in the uncountable sense. — Hippietrail 02:20, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Oh another way to check whether a usage is uncountable or plural is to check the verb when "data" is the subject. Plural: "data are", "data have", "data show", "data prove", "data do" vs "data is", "data has", "data shows", "data proves", "data does" - of course the more scientific words tend to bring up more scientists' writing on Google. And they have more tendency toward the pedantic use. Can anyone think of a common verb used with data that would have a non-scientific domain? — Hippietrail 02:40, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

A choice might directly pit countable vs uncountable uses of data against each other is a common adjective that inflects for number, such as this data uncountable versus these data plural. (This data wins in Google.) It might be productive to check use over time: maybe "this data" is gaining or losing ground to these data in modern use, but all the (relatively) old documents are still around to muddy usage?

"this data"

"these data"

ratio

5/1981–5/1985

140

39

3.5 ∶ 1

5/1985–5/1990

1,520

383

3.96 ∶ 1

5/1990–5/1995

12,600

8,860

1.42 ∶ 1

5/1995–5/2000

29,500

21,700

1.35 ∶ 1

5/2000–5/2001

44,900

8,500

5.28 ∶ 1

5/2001–5/2002

98,600

8,620

11.43 ∶ 1

5/2002–5/2003

340,000

8,270

41.11 ∶ 1

5/2003–5/2004

46,800

11,300

4.14 ∶ 1

Search on this data vs these data using searches restricted by year on Google groups. This data is pure corpus fetishism and hasn't been checked for anomalies (why are the 2003–2004 numbers so low?), the accuracy of google's rounding, or irrelevancies such as "this/these data banks" etc., but is kind of telling.

It's not particularly unusual for a word to change from countable to uncountable as it is borrowed across languages: virus in Latin was a word meaning "slime" and uncountable, but in English used for specific objects and thus countable; similarly, as datum changed meaning from "gift" to "information", the pressure may have pushed data into a collective form (just as we generally say this information and not these informations—foreign speakers don't always catch this). —Muke Tever 04:12, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I often use "data" with a plural verb in informal (but software-development-related) email and discussions ("The performance data back me up on this optimization"). However, I almost always use it with singular/uncountable adjectives ("The load is lower because there's less data to process")--and therefore with a singular verb, if the adjective-modified word appears as a subject ("That data needs to be handled"). "Fewer data" or "those data" sounds stilted in almost any context; if I really meant it to be countable, I'd probably say "Fewer pieces of data" or "those data points."

Of course that all may just be my idiosyncrasy; at least some people find any plural use stilted, and I'm sure people who rant about how the internet is ruining the language find any singular use nauseating, but I still think it points to the fact that "data" is still in the process of migrating to uncountable (or at least was a decade or two ago when my idiolect started freezing). --76.205.215.91 21:45, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

long a no double t in data ..... battle rattle datta get it? please remove the "short a" pronuciation as its not proper english. it must have 2 t's to be short. —This unsigned comment was added by 65.31.237.103 (talk • contribs) 2007-06-28T19:43:59.

Is someone even allowed to rant about proper English when they spell "it's" as "its," don't understand capitalization, use five dots instead of three in an ellipsis, can't form a complete sentence...? I also love that the only examples he came up with actually have three consonants, not just two; apparently words like batter are too obscure. I'm also curious how he pronounces "cat" given his rule. --76.205.215.91 21:45, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Is someone allowed to rant about someone else ranting about proper English when he uses "they" to refer to a single person?